By Rohit Vaid

New Delhi, Mar 13 (IANS): The Russian-Ukrainian crisis is expected to keep non-ferrous metal prices high in the near future.

The crisis has triggered shortages of these industrial metals which in turn have led to massive spike in their prices.

Till now, international prices of aluminium, copper, lead, nickel, tin, titanium and zinc have increased exponentially.

At present, aluminium is trading at Rs 284 per kg. The price had risen to Rs 320 per kg but retreated thereafter.

Similarly, nickel prices are on a high. Last week, nickel prices surged as much as 111 per cent to trade briefly above $100,000 a tonne.

The exponential rise in price led London Metal Exchange (LME) to suspend trading in the non-ferrous metal. However, prices corrected soon afterwards.

Besides, zinc is currently trading at Rs 322 per kg. It is expected to trade in the range of Rs 320-Rs 330 per kg.

Furthermore, various sectors like steel, automobile, electrical components, construction amongst others are expected to face the brunt of the price rise.

"The price of non-ferrous metal's products in domestic market have increased abnormally over last couple of weeks due to the rising cost of raw materials at international level," said Kshitij Purohit, Lead of Commodities and Currencies CapitalVia Global Research.

"For short to medium term, prices will be marginally bullish for most of the base metals."

According to Tapan Patel, Senior Analyst (Commodities), HDFC Securities: "We can see the supply worries to continue for the metals like Nickel and Aluminium from Russia following the Western sanctions."

"The post war demand for re-building infrastructure and defence may also boost buying in industrial metals. The post pandemic recovery may support base metals to trade higher for the year."